Single Session Small Group Learning Experience

Date 05/05/15

Toddler Class

Drama Focused: Dressing up (dramatic play)

Events of interest/Links to observations:

The children have been observed and seem to really enjoy dressing up, particularly with construction type props.
Context for Learning (Indoor/Outdoor):
Indoors or outdoors (depending on the weather)
Anticipated Outcomes:
1. For children to learn about characterisation
2. For children to extend their imagination and play skills
3. For children to be able to extend their language skills
4. For children to be able to engage with their fellow peers
Time

Teacher-initiated

Child-initiated

Learning and Development

Areas

In the
morning.

1. I will get together various dress-

The children will be able to interact

with the costumes and props, as
well as one another. The children
can interact as little or as much as
they like with them items provided
to them.

Building Waterfalls:

up clothes that the children have

previously used.

2. I will make these dress-ups

available to the children to choose
from.

Exploring we create, represent

and communicate our
understanding in many ways
imagination and creativity are
valued and promoted.

3. I will dress up with the children to

encourage them to get involved in
the activity.

4. I will ask children questions about

the props and costumes like;
what colours are these? How
would you use these? What type
of person wears these sorts of
clothes? This will hopefully
initiate conversations about
different characters for example: a
builder.

EYLF:
Outcome 4: Children are
confident and involved
learners
Children develop dispositions
for learning such as curiosity,
cooperation, confidence,
creativity,
commitment, enthusiasm,
persistence, imagination and
reflexivity

Resources

Construction costumes
and props

Small group possibilities

Assessment & monitoring opportunities

The activity will be done in a small group in order for children

to use more props and interact on a smaller scale with other
children.

This activity could assess childrens abilities to recognise what different people
like builders do in their jobs and how different objects work. The children could
also be assessed on their language skills (how they represent different words),
how they use play in a variety of ways and the way children communicate and
interact with other children. Taking turns and working together is something else
that could be looked at.

Self Reflections/Forward planning

Routines & transitions

The children learnt about different construction worker outfits,

imaginary skills, role-play skills, social and language skills. The
anticipated outcomes were achieved well as the children learnt
about characterisation, play skills, about interacting with their peers
and the above. Next, I might show the children a book or pictures of
people in the same outfits as they have dressed up in to show them
real-life relations to the dress-ups.
The children had a lot of fun hammering and banging on areas of the
playground with their tools. I learnt that children learn best when
you let them have the choice of what to do instead of being forced to
do something. What worked was letting the children have free-reign
of the dress-ups as they could choose them whenever they wanted
to. What perhaps didnt work was that there were more outfits that I
had chosen, rather than they choose. Next time, perhaps the
children could choose their own dress-ups. I learnt that its good to
further scaffold the children in their learning to help extend their
knowledge. From here, we could construct something out of
cardboard boxes for example to show the role of a construction
worker.

A transition for this activity could involve singing a song to the children or with
them. It could be a made up one like; we are dressing up, 1, 2, 3! or it could be
a sond the children are familiar with.

Real-life engagements
The children will be able to dress up in clothes that real-life people would wear
whilst working and will have the opportunity to see how representations of
different objects work.

Play
Play is involved as the children are dressing up and having the chance to use
their imaginary skills to pretend to be a character of some sort.

Differentiated teaching
I will make sure that each child has the opportunity to dress up if they want to. I
will not force anyone to join in and will try my best to make the activity as exciting
as possible for the children.

Host Teacher Feedback

This experience went well with several children involving themselves and role-playing what they know about tools and dress-ups. I suggested to Loren that
next time she could find a book relating to this subject and also print photos from the internet of males and females doing jobs in this profession these could
be placed near the tool role-play items for exploration.